


The Other Day

by QuokkaMocha



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Ecology, Fluff, Gen, Humanity, Middle Earth, Modern Middle Earth, Nature, One Shot, Sad Ending, Short One Shot, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25357585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuokkaMocha/pseuds/QuokkaMocha
Summary: A conversation between two Ents, as Middle Earth becomes the world we know today.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	The Other Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is an edited version of a story that originally appeared on Open Scrolls Archive, under my other pen name, SpaceWeavil. The plot and characters are the same, but the prose itself was edited to clean it up a little, as it's over ten years since this was written and hopefully I've improved a bit.

**The Other Day**

‘The other day,’ said the Ent, giving his branches a brusque shake to dislodge the latest in the line of wood pigeons, whose generations had been scratching at him for fifty years, ‘I saw the most unusual thing.’

‘Oh,’ replied his comrade, stretching his trunk with a dull creak. 

‘A man,’ the first Ent explained, ‘with the top of him – his _head_ would you call it? – covered in feathers. Climbed up into my branches whilst I was musing upon how long it has been since we last saw elves in this forest. He seemed to be hiding from something, but before I could ask him why he had decided to scale my body uninvited, two more came up to join him. Four more stamped and growled and paced around the ground, racing and hurrying and making such a fuss. They mentioned something about a ‘Commonwealth’, though a commonwealth of what, I cannot say. They did not even notice me.’

‘There is no need for that,’ agreed the second Ent. His features moulded slowly into a frown, as, a few yards off, a pair of young humans danced around a nearby tree, exchanging kisses and posies of flowers, finally pausing to carve symbols in the bark. ‘No respect. Not like the men of old, or the few we knew at least. These are more like Orcs.’

‘Like orcs,’ concurred the first Ent. There was no sign of the young lovers now. Winter, or perhaps several winters, had fallen and thawed and left green grass that baked to a golden yellow through the course of summer. The forest was a good deal smaller, though the Ent had not noticed any trees dying. As he’d mulled over his memory of the warring humans, he had been aware of a howling, buzzing sound, and strange creatures with metal bodies that had come and gone, more humans crawling over them like ants on hot summer stones.

‘What do you suppose that was?’ he asked. Blinking, he saw that across that bare patch of ground where once the forest had spread out, there was a long, straight patch of grey road stretched across the countryside, unnaturally flat, like the surface of a pebble worn smooth on the bed of a river. A horn gave out two short, nasal blasts and a metal cart passed by with a puff of foul-smelling smoke. Its goggled, leather-headed driver paid the Ents no heed as he hurtled past, travelling, at the very least, at five miles an hour.

‘More ‘new orcs’,’ sighed the second Ent. 

More carts passed, becoming faster and louder. The forest shrank again and more grey roads appeared. The world beyond the forest now seemed full of them and their rumbling. Sleek shapes sped by so fast that the Ents had barely time to take them in. 

‘I expect that is some new beast of war,’ the first Ent remarked. ‘They are always at war, men and orcs. The other day, I saw two whole armies march through this wood. Said something about fighting over roses. I ask you – fighting over roses? When have they ever bothered with flowers, except to pick them? Or trees, except to cut them down and burn them? Or anything alive, unless it can be killed? But roses give them some excuse for war, and that is all that matters to them.’

The second Ent paid little attention to his friend’s monologue. He felt rather bad for this, but his mind had been drawn to the sudden appearance of large birds in the sky, which he could see through the sparse canopy of the handful of remaining trees. The first ones dropped eggs to the ground, which burst into flame as soon as they landed. This intrigued the Ent, but he thought it was probably something to do with war, as he vaguely heard his friend suggest. Then as his friend continued, the birds rose higher in the sky, grew larger, and seemed to give up this idea of setting the earth on fire with their eggs. They were not giant eagles, however, the Ent decided. He hadn’t seen one of those for…well he could not remember how long. No, these gleamed like metal, impossibly high, leaving thin trails of cloud in their wake.

When he brought his mind back to the conversation, the Ent saw that the forest was now a copse, clinging to a bank of earth that sloped down to one of the wide, grey roads where the metal carts crawled slowly forward in a yellowish, choking haze. Across the road, large, metal beasts chugged across the golden field that now lay where the birch groves had been, the last time the Ent had glanced that way. The beasts spat out bales of hay like furballs and again, conducted themselves with snarls and growls that pressed all other sounds out of the air. The Ents paused for a few years in their discussion to watch this, hoping that these machines would not venture too close.

‘If only they stopped to think…’ the second Ent resumed finally. 

A young human in a colourful robe and bright beads tried to hug him. Others sang and danced around him and sang songs about things blowing in the wind. Their zest grew irritating after a few days, and the next time one of them tried to hug him, the Ent gave the human a gentle bash on the head with a low-hanging branch. 

‘..then they might appreciate things,’ the Ent continued. ‘But men are not like elves, who live as long as Arda, and they have no time to stop and think, or so they believe. They speed around and change things and try to fill their little lives with things, so quickly that they do not notice the things they trample.’ 

As another night fell, the Ents paused a while to watch the stream of metal shapes stream by on the road, in the raw glare of its tall lanterns that made the night orange-grey and killed the stars. 

‘No time,’ breathed the first Ent, with great sadness in his voice, ‘to notice anything. Though perhaps…’

The Ent cut short, as a group of humans clambered into his branches and strung a cloth banner out to face the road. The Ents could not read human writing but the intruders chanted at the trails of metal carts, something about saying no to an M4 expansion, whatever that was. Other humans scattered themselves about the grass bank, waving squares of stiff paper on sticks. Now and then, the carts loosed another barrage of honks from their horns as they passed and the humans cheered. 

‘No manners,’ grumbled the second Ent. Carts with flickering blue lights halted by the edge of the road, and men in dark clothes grabbed the humans who had climbed into the Ents’ branches, hauling them down. They grabbed and clawed to try and hold on, but the dark-clad humans prevailed in the end, and the irritating little crowd of people disappeared. 

The first Ent grunted in agreement. A host of larger, metal carts, their spinning lights the same sickly orange as the lanterns above the road, gathered around the embankment. Men in yellow hats like walnut shells and bright orange waistcoats prowled around the Ents. One sprayed a rune on each of their trunks in lurid pink. The Ents’ branches shuddered in outrage.

‘The very idea…’ huffed the first Ent, but his sonorous words disappeared beneath the whining of machines. 

None of the humans, of course, noticed.


End file.
